Before and After
by Xtina Jones
Summary: There is her mother before, and there is her mother after, and they might as well be two different people. There is her life before, and there is her life after, and she cannot reconcile the two. A 2 POV one-shot in which Grace and Alicia reflect on the aftermath of 5x15.


Hello, everyone. This is my first Good Wife story on here though I've been enjoying all the amazing writing for this fandom for quite some time. Like many people, 5x15 inspired me to write. This is the result.

One A/N: Will's eyes are blue in this (I think they're brown on the show but blue just seemed better to me)

* * *

There is her mother before, and there is her mother after, and they might as well be two different people.

* * *

Grace remembers when her mother would cook them all pancakes on the weekends to make up for being so busy during the week and she'd let them pick whatever toppings and fillings they wanted. Zach always ended up with flour in his hair and her mother with batter on her nose and Grace would laugh at them both and get whipped cream to the face as retaliation.

She remembers late nights of studying and her mother knocking softly on her door, offering her popcorn or pretzels or carrot sticks or tea or a gentle squeeze of encouragement on her shoulder and a kiss in her hair.

She remembers pointless fights and silly arguments and curling up next to her mother on the cough, an apology written in her eyes, and her mother lifting a corner of the afghan to her as a peace offering, never truly upset with her.

Her mother was a pillar of strength and resilience in the after of her father's scandal, all straight-backed and head held high, striking a new path for herself in the world. There were fears and nerves but her mother buried them beneath the bedrock of her steely resolve. This was her mother born of brimstone and fire, burning away her softer edges and leaving them behind in a pile of ash and mistakes and regrets.

This _was_ her mother.

* * *

When Grace thinks about it, there were many befores and many afters and they all held different versions of her mother. She was always changing, adapting, becoming someone new. But there was a brief amount of time, between an after and a before, when there was just her and Zach and her mother and Will, when her mother wasn't shedding an old skin and struggling to grow a new one. She knows now that this was her mother in her purest form, as her true self, the person she was supposed to be and could have been. _If only, if only…_

Grace also knows she will never again see her mother that way. What remained of that woman died on the cold tiled floor of a Chicago courtroom along with the man she loved.

* * *

Her mother, or rather the shell of the person that used to be Alicia Florrick, is all cold hard lines and dark eyes now. She is slow and deliberate in her movements and actions, but now caution and uncertainty and a desperate need to somehow forget guide her. She is not confident, she is not sure, she seems to be a ghost in a woman's body and Grace no longer knows if she is the mother or the child in the shattered remains of her family.

Her mother shakes and falters and looks right through Grace and everyone else, staring straight into a black abyss. She is there and _not there_ and Grace thinks of purgatory and finally understands why the possibility of being trapped _in between_ spurs so many people to be good and holy. She worries that her mother will never choose to be here or _there_, and she hates herself for thinking that some days her mother would be better off _there_. At least she'd be with him again, would be whole again, and Grace thinks she could be selfless enough to let her mother go. It would be better than the deadness of her mother's eyes, the lifelessness etched into her skin and bones.

* * *

Grace sees her mother in shadows now, in shades of who she once was. She sees the pieces fading away one by one and she can do nothing to stop them. In her memory her mother is golds and ambers, yellow mixing with red in a soft orange glow. She grasps onto these colors, tries to bring them back into her mother's life, but there is only grey now, dull and dimming and all-consuming.

* * *

There is her life before, and there is her life after, and Alicia cannot reconcile the two.

* * *

Alicia remembers Georgetown: late nights and bad coffee, papers and books strewn across an apartment floor, legal arguments and philosophical discussions, highlighters and sticky notes, meaningful glances and light touches, silences that spoke volumes, missed opportunities and bad timing, a deep friendship forged in the fires of teamwork, of mutual understanding, of respect.

She remembers beers shared over greasy pizza while a basketball game played in the background and she had no idea what was going on. When she accidentally shouted for their (_his_) team at the wrong moment he laughed, but it was _with_ her not _at_ her, and his smile promised that there would be more nights like this and he would teach her, guide her, help her understand.

She remembers walking into his office too many years later, looking braver than she felt, trying to hide her desperation, not wanting to seem weak. And once again there was his smile, offering her a second chance, renewing old promises, making new ones. His eyes shone so brightly that day, a striking contrast against his dark suit, and even then her hear knew what her head had yet to discover.

She was a coward and she was cruel and she was foolish, and after she left she was once again straight-backed and head held high, but her step lacked a spring and her guilt dragged her down. She plowed forward, found herself using weapons she once thought beneath her, lost her former self in the battles of a war she did not want to fight.

This was who she was in the end; this was how he last saw her.

* * *

When Alicia thinks about her life she feels as if she has been cleaved in two, split down the middle, torn apart and remade from the worst parts of herself. How can there be anything good left within her after everything that's happened, everything she's done, everything she failed to do? She has been a chameleon most of her life, wearing the appropriate skin for what each situation and stage of life expected from her. She's been something else, someone else, for so long that she doesn't know what to be now. He was the only one who could remind her, could make her peel away all the facades and the false layers, could show her who she really was underneath it all. She could have been that way, could have been the person he saw that no one else did. _If only, if only…_

Alicia knows that she will never again find that part of herself, knows it like she knows tort law, legal contracts, the Constitution, the shape of his jaw, the color of his eyes, the lines on his hands, the time of his death.

* * *

She wakes up in darkness every morning, forces herself to go through a routine: get up, take a shower, put on clothes, apply makeup, make coffee, eat breakfast, go to work. She does this five days a week until she can't do it anymore. She breaks and bends, forgets how to be passionate about cases, clients, law, her family, life. She knows she still exists because she can still feel a dull ache in her bones, can still hear his voice in her head, can still recall the smell of his aftershave. She wilts, shrivels into nothingness, floats from moment to moment until the days blur into a cycle of rise, breathe, wander, remember, forget, escape, submit to the darkness, rise again, repeat.

When she dreams it is in golden hues, shades of yellows and brown and blues breaking through and piercing her soul. She is lucky if she dreams. On the nights that she does she refuses to open her eyes, lies there and replays it over and over, grasps desperately at it as it fades away with the darkness of the night. When she doesn't dream, everything is black and grey and splashed with red. The red starts out bright, deepens to crimson, seeps everywhere and drowns her. When she wakes from these nightmares they follow her throughout her day, burrow themselves inside her so that all she can see is _red, red, red,_ tainting everything.

* * *

Alicia sees Will in every facet of her life, in every moment of every one of her empty days. She sees his smile in strangers' faces, hears his laugh echoing in crowded rooms, feels his breath on a windy day, finds the blue of his eyes in a cloudless sky, imagines the caress of his hands in her dreams, thinks of him when Zach gets into Georgetown, remembers the comforting weight of his body as she lies alone in bed. He is never far from her, yet she can never reach him. She can never touch him, never hold him, cannot be forgiven, cannot make him come back to her.

* * *

There is her life before Will, there is her life with Will, there is her life after Will, and she wishes it had been her instead of him.


End file.
